This short interview from 1960 has some fascinating comments from Orson Welles on the uphill battle he faced getting Citizen Kane into theaters. It was often speculated of course, that the titular character was based on publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst, who only exacerbated this notion by using all his resources to try and prevent the film’s release—this is without ever having seen it. (You’d think a strategy of denial might be a little less self-incriminating!) Welles manages to get in a snide jab with: “Kane isn’t really founded on Hearst… in particular,” specifying that Kane was a composite character.

Even more fascinatingly, Welles does not shy from the more explicit politics of the film, admitting “it was intended consciously as a sort of social document, as an attack on the acquisitive society, and indeed on acquisition in general.” This clear critique of power managed to get him branded as a Communist in the states and banned in the Soviet Union—can’t win for losing, I suppose. As it was, Hearst actually did succeed at limiting the run of the film in the US—by a lot. Few theaters even showed the film. The box office numbers suffered, and though Citizen Kane is now considered one of the greats, it damaged Welles’ career from the very start.
 

 
Yesterday saw Kultur‘s release of Orson Welles: The Paris Interview.  Welles was always a candid, cantankerous speaker, and this sit-down, conducted with Bernard Braden, is particularly memorable for the Citizen Kane director’s utter trashing of that film‘s famous (spoiler alert?) sled, Rosebud.

Welles says he was ashamed of it and called it, “a rather tawdry device…a dollar-book Freudian gag.”  The complete Paris interview runs about an hour.  10 minutes of it follows below:

 
Updated/Bonus: 5 more minutes of the Paris Interview

Previously on Dangerous Minds: Orson Welles Double Feature